Latest news with #RosieODonnell
Washington Post
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Doonesbury Comic Strips by Garry Trudeau - July 17, 2000
........Trump on Jeffrey Epstein: "Somebody that nobody cares about."....Lara Loomer: "How come we can't talk about what a dumb lying bimbo Pam Blondi is?...How many more times is this woman going to get away with F-ing everything up before she is fired?"....Trump on Rosie O'Donnell: "She is a threat to humanity."....O'Donnell in response: "I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours. I'm everything you fear: a loud woman, a queer woman, a mother who tells the truth, an American who got out of the country before you set it ablaze."....Trump on Elon Musk: "50% genius, 50% boy."....Steve Bannon: "Formerly known as Elon Musk, Elmo the not an American, you're a South we take enough time and prove the facts of that, you should be deported because it's a crime what you did -- among many."....Musk: "The fat, drunken slob called Bannon will go back to prison and this time for a long time. He has a lifetime of crime to pay for."....Tucker Carlson: "Why are my cities disgusting? I don't even want to go there. It smells like weed and halal food."....CA Gov. Gavin Newsom: "Kids running from tear gas, crying on the phone because their mother was just taken from the fields. Trump calls me 'Newscum' but he's the real scum."....Jonathan V. Last on Trump: "Reinventing ICE as the primary instrument of internal state power. ICE is more or less a national brute squad."...Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Trump: "Authoritarian leader cult is folding to his will."....CA Governor's press office on Stephen Miller: "This fascist cuck in DC continues his assault on democracy and the the Constitution hurt your feelings, Stephen. Cry harder."....Charlie Kirk on Texas flooding: "The death toll likely would not have been as high if it wasn't for DEI."....Dean Blundell on Trump: "An aging, increasingly incoherent, barely upright man."....Maureen Dowd: "Trump, who plays at being king, is not interested in virtue; only in humiliation, conflict, enrichment and revenge."....Tina Brown: "Out of Trump's ass, his ego, and his flawless media intuition, came: Let's bomb the shit out of Fordo."....John Cleese on Trump administration: "This is why dictatorships fail. Dictators always surround themselves with yes-people who are terrified to acquaint the dictator with reality."....Trump on Sen. Rand Paul: "His ideas are actually crazy (losers!). The people of Kentucky can't stand him."....VP JD Vance: "I empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle difference is that back then we had dumb presidents."....Andrew Sullivan: "A president who lies about everything all the time is singularly incapable of being a war president. People have to trust your word in a war. But Trump's word is toilet paper."....John Oliver on ICE agents: "These are criminal gangs,...bounty hunters making money for each body they manage to kidnap. They have quotas. You are their USA is sick."....WH Communications Director Steven Cheung: "The Nobel Peace Prize is illegitimate if President Trump -- the ultimate peace president -- is denied his rightful recognition of bringing harmony across the world."....Rep. MTG: "America is the greatest country in the world and I fight the nasty 'America Last' Democrats in Washington to keep it that way."....Trump on Democrats: "I hate them. I cannot stand them, because I really believe they hate our country."....Rep. Hakeem Jeffries on House passing Trump's BBB: "One big ugly is a crime scene."....Jonathan Alter: "Might as well tear down the Statue of LIberty and flush Emma Lazarus's poem down the toilet."....Garrison Keillor: "Every morning the news hits us like a baseball bat. How did this crook and clown achieve the White House so he could wage war on science, higher education, the Constitution, regulatory agencies, and the world economy, while redecorating the Oval Office to look like the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas?"....Trump supporter to reporter "We're not stupid. Donald Trump is a genius. That's what the J stands for.".... ........Trump on Jeffrey Epstein: "Somebody that nobody cares about."....Lara Loomer: "How come we can't talk about what a dumb lying bimbo Pam Blondi is?...How many more times is this woman going to get away with F-ing everything up before she is fired?"....Trump on Rosie O'Donnell: "She is a threat to humanity."....O'Donnell in response: "I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours. I'm everything you fear: a loud woman, a queer woman, a mother who tells the truth, an American who got out of the country before you set it ablaze."....Trump on Elon Musk: "50% genius, 50% boy."....Steve Bannon: "Formerly known as Elon Musk, Elmo the not an American, you're a South we take enough time and prove the facts of that, you should be deported because it's a crime what you did -- among many."....Musk: "The fat, drunken slob called Bannon will go back to prison and this time for a long time. He has a lifetime of crime to pay for."....Tucker Carlson: "Why are my cities disgusting? I don't even want to go there. It smells like weed and halal food."....CA Gov. Gavin Newsom: "Kids running from tear gas, crying on the phone because their mother was just taken from the fields. Trump calls me 'Newscum' but he's the real scum."....Jonathan V. Last on Trump: "Reinventing ICE as the primary instrument of internal state power. ICE is more or less a national brute squad."...Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Trump: "Authoritarian leader cult is folding to his will."....CA Governor's press office on Stephen Miller: "This fascist cuck in DC continues his assault on democracy and the the Constitution hurt your feelings, Stephen. Cry harder."....Charlie Kirk on Texas flooding: "The death toll likely would not have been as high if it wasn't for DEI."....Dean Blundell on Trump: "An aging, increasingly incoherent, barely upright man."....Maureen Dowd: "Trump, who plays at being king, is not interested in virtue; only in humiliation, conflict, enrichment and revenge."....Tina Brown: "Out of Trump's ass, his ego, and his flawless media intuition, came: Let's bomb the shit out of Fordo."....John Cleese on Trump administration: "This is why dictatorships fail. Dictators always surround themselves with yes-people who are terrified to acquaint the dictator with reality."....Trump on Sen. Rand Paul: "His ideas are actually crazy (losers!). The people of Kentucky can't stand him."....VP JD Vance: "I empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle difference is that back then we had dumb presidents."....Andrew Sullivan: "A president who lies about everything all the time is singularly incapable of being a war president. People have to trust your word in a war. But Trump's word is toilet paper."....John Oliver on ICE agents: "These are criminal gangs,...bounty hunters making money for each body they manage to kidnap. They have quotas. You are their USA is sick."....WH Communications Director Steven Cheung: "The Nobel Peace Prize is illegitimate if President Trump -- the ultimate peace president -- is denied his rightful recognition of bringing harmony across the world."....Rep. MTG: "America is the greatest country in the world and I fight the nasty 'America Last' Democrats in Washington to keep it that way."....Trump on Democrats: "I hate them. I cannot stand them, because I really believe they hate our country."....Rep. Hakeem Jeffries on House passing Trump's BBB: "One big ugly is a crime scene."....Jonathan Alter: "Might as well tear down the Statue of LIberty and flush Emma Lazarus's poem down the toilet."....Garrison Keillor: "Every morning the news hits us like a baseball bat. How did this crook and clown achieve the White House so he could wage war on science, higher education, the Constitution, regulatory agencies, and the world economy, while redecorating the Oval Office to look like the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas?"....Trump supporter to reporter "We're not stupid. Donald Trump is a genius. That's what the J stands for.".... ........Trump on Jeffrey Epstein: "Somebody that nobody cares about."....Lara Loomer: "How come we can't talk about what a dumb lying bimbo Pam Blondi is?...How many more times is this woman going to get away with F-ing everything up before she is fired?"....Trump on Rosie O'Donnell: "She is a threat to humanity."....O'Donnell in response: "I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours. I'm everything you fear: a loud woman, a queer woman, a mother who tells the truth, an American who got out of the country before you set it ablaze."....Trump on Elon Musk: "50% genius, 50% boy."....Steve Bannon: "Formerly known as Elon Musk, Elmo the not an American, you're a South we take enough time and prove the facts of that, you should be deported because it's a crime what you did -- among many."....Musk: "The fat, drunken slob called Bannon will go back to prison and this time for a long time. He has a lifetime of crime to pay for."....Tucker Carlson: "Why are my cities disgusting? I don't even want to go there. It smells like weed and halal food."....CA Gov. Gavin Newsom: "Kids running from tear gas, crying on the phone because their mother was just taken from the fields. Trump calls me 'Newscum' but he's the real scum."....Jonathan V. Last on Trump: "Reinventing ICE as the primary instrument of internal state power. ICE is more or less a national brute squad."...Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Trump: "Authoritarian leader cult is folding to his will."....CA Governor's press office on Stephen Miller: "This fascist cuck in DC continues his assault on democracy and the the Constitution hurt your feelings, Stephen. Cry harder."....Charlie Kirk on Texas flooding: "The death toll likely would not have been as high if it wasn't for DEI."....Dean Blundell on Trump: "An aging, increasingly incoherent, barely upright man."....Maureen Dowd: "Trump, who plays at being king, is not interested in virtue; only in humiliation, conflict, enrichment and revenge."....Tina Brown: "Out of Trump's ass, his ego, and his flawless media intuition, came: Let's bomb the shit out of Fordo."....John Cleese on Trump administration: "This is why dictatorships fail. Dictators always surround themselves with yes-people who are terrified to acquaint the dictator with reality."....Trump on Sen. Rand Paul: "His ideas are actually crazy (losers!). The people of Kentucky can't stand him."....VP JD Vance: "I empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle difference is that back then we had dumb presidents."....Andrew Sullivan: "A president who lies about everything all the time is singularly incapable of being a war president. People have to trust your word in a war. But Trump's word is toilet paper."....John Oliver on ICE agents: "These are criminal gangs,...bounty hunters making money for each body they manage to kidnap. They have quotas. You are their USA is sick."....WH Communications Director Steven Cheung: "The Nobel Peace Prize is illegitimate if President Trump -- the ultimate peace president -- is denied his rightful recognition of bringing harmony across the world."....Rep. MTG: "America is the greatest country in the world and I fight the nasty 'America Last' Democrats in Washington to keep it that way."....Trump on Democrats: "I hate them. I cannot stand them, because I really believe they hate our country."....Rep. Hakeem Jeffries on House passing Trump's BBB: "One big ugly is a crime scene."....Jonathan Alter: "Might as well tear down the Statue of LIberty and flush Emma Lazarus's poem down the toilet."....Garrison Keillor: "Every morning the news hits us like a baseball bat. How did this crook and clown achieve the White House so he could wage war on science, higher education, the Constitution, regulatory agencies, and the world economy, while redecorating the Oval Office to look like the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas?"....Trump supporter to reporter "We're not stupid. Donald Trump is a genius. That's what the J stands for."....
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Threatens to Revoke Rosie O'Donnell's Citizenship
President Donald Trump ignited a new war of words with Rosie O'Donnell. Trump suggested on Saturday that he should revoke O'Donnell's citizenship. Even though that is not possible, he dug in even deeper at Andrews Air Force Base Monday. O'Donnell, who moved to Ireland after Trump's 2024 election, fired back. The Trump and O'Donnell feud goes back nearly two decades, ever since she mocked the future president's hair on The View.
Washington Post
21 hours ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Can Trump revoke citizenship, and how often does it happen worldwide?
The Trump administration has repeatedly threatened the citizenship of certain Americans — be it the president mulling 'taking away' comedian Rosie O'Donnell's or the Justice Department pledging to prioritize stripping it from naturalized citizens. Worldwide, the practice of stripping a person of citizenship has increased in recent decades, with more countries strengthening laws in the name of national security, experts say. Immigration and citizenship researchers warn of the potential for governments to weaponize such laws against political dissidents or opponents. The United Nations says nationality is a human right. 'Citizenship is a person's most fundamental legal status,' said Lucas van der Baaren, a researcher at the Global Citizenship Observatory and the University of Copenhagen. 'Our access to rights is dependent on having that status. Once you lose that, your entire life is turned upside down.' The majority — about two-thirds — of the world's countries have some sort of provision allowing for the stripping of citizenship, usually for reasons of disloyalty or national security such as serving in a foreign army, van der Baaren said. In 79 countries, the government can revoke citizenship if a person, usually a naturalized citizen, commits a serious criminal offense, he said. Countries mostly moved away from the practice after it was weaponized by Nazi Germany to strip tens of thousands of Jews and others of their status and property. But following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, more nations — particularly in Europe — began pushing to strengthen their laws in the name of national security, van der Baaren said. This year, Sweden announced plans to amend its constitution so that anyone convicted of crimes perceived as threatening to the state can be stripped of their citizenship. In Germany, a leaked paper revealed that the country's conservative political parties wanted to enact the ability to revoke citizenship from 'supporters of terrorism, antisemites and extremists.' Under the 1961 U.N. Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, a signatory nation 'shall not deprive a person of its nationality if such deprivation would render him stateless' — meaning those countries should move to strip citizenship only if the person has citizenship with another country. The U.S. is not a signatory to the convention. 'That's problematic because then only people with dual citizenships can be affected by these provisions, and those are people usually with migration backgrounds,' van der Baaren said, adding that the legal restrictions could lead to discrimination. In one recent case involving three people convicted of terrorism-related crimes, the Dutch government moved in March to strip the citizenship of two defendants because they were also citizens of Turkey and Morocco, while the third was a Dutch citizen with no other nationality. The Amsterdam District Court ruled against the government, saying its distinction between mono-nationals and dual nationals amounted to discrimination based on ethnic origin. The government is appealing the decision. Some of the most high-profile recent government revocations of citizenship have involved the repatriation of nationals purported to have joined or fought for the Islamic State in Syria. In 2023, Shamima Begum, a U.K.-born woman who left the country 10 years ago at age 15 to join the Islamic State, lost her appeal to keep her British citizenship. The U.K. government argued that stripping Begum of her citizenship did not make her stateless because she has a right to Bangladeshi citizenship through her parents, but Bangladesh said she was not a citizen. As of this year, she remained in a detention camp in northern Syria. That same year, an Ottawa court ordered the Canadian government to extradite four men with alleged Islamic State links home from Syria after previously allowing the repatriation of a small number of women and children. Canada was one of the few countries to harden its laws against revoking citizenship, with then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau overturning his predecessor's more restrictive measures, saying: 'A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.' But the lesser known cases should be of concern, as well, van der Baaren argued, because those are the ones that raise questions of abuse. Russia — where the Kremlin has stripped the citizenship of a climate advocate, a campaign manager of the only opposition candidate to run against President Vladimir Putin, the head of the Azerbaijani diaspora and many more — passed legislation in 2023 allowing authorities to strip naturalized Russians for certain crimes, including breaching Moscow's wartime censorship laws banning any criticism of the military. Bahrain has revoked the citizenship of hundreds of people since 2012, including 'human rights defenders, political activists, and journalists,' according to Human Rights Watch, with the 'vast majority' left stateless. Following a constitutional change in 2023, Nicaragua's government stripped the citizenship of at least 300 domestic critics, forcing opponents of President Daniel Ortega to flee the country. 'If you look at the textbook provisions themselves, they're quite broad,' van der Baaren said. 'There are clear risks that these provisions will be used to get rid of political dissidents.' As with other countries, it's difficult to track how many times the U.S. government has moved to revoke citizenship in recent years. According to the Immigration Legal Resource Center, the federal government filed an average of 11 denaturalization cases a year from 1990 to 2017, with year-by-year numbers ticking upward after 9/11 and again under President Barack Obama. Trump's first administration sought to expand those efforts, with the Justice Department launching a section focused on denaturalization in 2020. Irina Manta, a Hofstra University law professor who tracks denaturalization cases, tallied 168 denaturalization cases in federal courts during Trump's first term. Americans have some protections in place when it comes to retaining their nationality. In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled that the government cannot take away citizenship without a person's consent — but left open an exception for cases involving fraud during the citizenship process. That exception has been open to broad interpretation, said Robertson, the Case Western Reserve professor. In 2018, one man had his citizenship revoked over a name discrepancy that some immigration attorneys argued could have been the result of a translation error rather than intentional fraud. In June, a federal judge granted the Justice Department's request to revoke the citizenship of Elliott Duke, a British-born naturalized American who served in the U.S. Army. Duke was arrested on child pornography charges in May 2013 — four months after becoming a citizen — and convicted in 2014, according to the Justice Department. The agency argued that when Duke applied for citizenship in 2012, he listed only a speeding ticket when the application asked whether the applicant 'ever committed a crime or offense for which you were not arrested' — despite confessing to investigators to possessing and distributing child pornography before and after becoming a citizen, the department said. Robertson argued that it was time to close out the exception set forth by the 1967 ruling. 'The government has really tried to abuse that exception, and the security of citizenship is just too important,' she said. 'I would delete that footnote and hope that the Supreme Court will hold that denaturalization, full stop, is inconsistent with American democracy.' Adam Taylor and Robyn Dixon contributed to this report.
Washington Post
a day ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Doonesbury Comic Strips by Garry Trudeau - July 15, 2025
........Trump on Jeffrey Epstein: "Somebody that nobody cares about."....Lara Loomer: "How come we can't talk about what a dumb lying bimbo Pam Blondi is?...How many more times is this woman going to get away with F-ing everything up before she is fired?"....Trump on Rosie O'Donnell: "She is a threat to humanity."....O'Donnell in response: "I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours. I'm everything you fear: a loud woman, a queer woman, a mother who tells the truth, an American who got out of the country before you set it ablaze."....Trump on Elon Musk: "50% genius, 50% boy."....Steve Bannon: "Formerly known as Elon Musk, Elmo the not an American, you're a South we take enough time and prove the facts of that, you should be deported because it's a crime what you did -- among many."....Musk: "The fat, drunken slob called Bannon will go back to prison and this time for a long time. He has a lifetime of crime to pay for."....Tucker Carlson: "Why are my cities disgusting? I don't even want to go there. It smells like weed and halal food."....CA Gov. Gavin Newsom: "Kids running from tear gas, crying on the phone because their mother was just taken from the fields. Trump calls me 'Newscum' but he's the real scum."....Jonathan V. Last on Trump: "Reinventing ICE as the primary instrument of internal state power. ICE is more or less a national brute squad."...Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Trump: "Authoritarian leader cult is folding to his will."....CA Governor's press office on Stephen Miller: "This fascist cuck in DC continues his assault on democracy and the the Constitution hurt your feelings, Stephen. Cry harder."....Charlie Kirk on Texas flooding: "The death toll likely would not have been as high if it wasn't for DEI."....Dean Blundell on Trump: "An aging, increasingly incoherent, barely upright man."....Maureen Dowd: "Trump, who plays at being king, is not interested in virtue; only in humiliation, conflict, enrichment and revenge."....Tina Brown: "Out of Trump's ass, his ego, and his flawless media intuition, came: Let's bomb the shit out of Fordo."....John Cleese on Trump administration: "This is why dictatorships fail. Dictators always surround themselves with yes-people who are terrified to acquaint the dictator with reality."....Trump on Sen. Rand Paul: "His ideas are actually crazy (losers!). The people of Kentucky can't stand him."....VP JD Vance: "I empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle difference is that back then we had dumb presidents."....Andrew Sullivan: "A president who lies about everything all the time is singularly incapable of being a war president. People have to trust your word in a war. But Trump's word is toilet paper."....John Oliver on ICE agents: "These are criminal gangs,...bounty hunters making money for each body they manage to kidnap. They have quotas. You are their USA is sick."....WH Communications Director Steven Cheung: "The Nobel Peace Prize is illegitimate if President Trump -- the ultimate peace president -- is denied his rightful recognition of bringing harmony across the world."....Rep. MTG: "America is the greatest country in the world and I fight the nasty 'America Last' Democrats in Washington to keep it that way."....Trump on Democrats: "I hate them. I cannot stand them, because I really believe they hate our country."....Rep. Hakeem Jeffries on House passing Trump's BBB: "One big ugly is a crime scene."....Jonathan Alter: "Might as well tear down the Statue of LIberty and flush Emma Lazarus's poem down the toilet."....Garrison Keillor: "Every morning the news hits us like a baseball bat. How did this crook and clown achieve the White House so he could wage war on science, higher education, the Constitution, regulatory agencies, and the world economy, while redecorating the Oval Office to look like the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas?"....Trump supporter to reporter "We're not stupid. Donald Trump is a genius. That's what the J stands for.".... ........Trump on Jeffrey Epstein: "Somebody that nobody cares about."....Lara Loomer: "How come we can't talk about what a dumb lying bimbo Pam Blondi is?...How many more times is this woman going to get away with F-ing everything up before she is fired?"....Trump on Rosie O'Donnell: "She is a threat to humanity."....O'Donnell in response: "I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours. I'm everything you fear: a loud woman, a queer woman, a mother who tells the truth, an American who got out of the country before you set it ablaze."....Trump on Elon Musk: "50% genius, 50% boy."....Steve Bannon: "Formerly known as Elon Musk, Elmo the not an American, you're a South we take enough time and prove the facts of that, you should be deported because it's a crime what you did -- among many."....Musk: "The fat, drunken slob called Bannon will go back to prison and this time for a long time. He has a lifetime of crime to pay for."....Tucker Carlson: "Why are my cities disgusting? I don't even want to go there. It smells like weed and halal food."....CA Gov. Gavin Newsom: "Kids running from tear gas, crying on the phone because their mother was just taken from the fields. Trump calls me 'Newscum' but he's the real scum."....Jonathan V. Last on Trump: "Reinventing ICE as the primary instrument of internal state power. ICE is more or less a national brute squad."...Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Trump: "Authoritarian leader cult is folding to his will."....CA Governor's press office on Stephen Miller: "This fascist cuck in DC continues his assault on democracy and the the Constitution hurt your feelings, Stephen. Cry harder."....Charlie Kirk on Texas flooding: "The death toll likely would not have been as high if it wasn't for DEI."....Dean Blundell on Trump: "An aging, increasingly incoherent, barely upright man."....Maureen Dowd: "Trump, who plays at being king, is not interested in virtue; only in humiliation, conflict, enrichment and revenge."....Tina Brown: "Out of Trump's ass, his ego, and his flawless media intuition, came: Let's bomb the shit out of Fordo."....John Cleese on Trump administration: "This is why dictatorships fail. Dictators always surround themselves with yes-people who are terrified to acquaint the dictator with reality."....Trump on Sen. Rand Paul: "His ideas are actually crazy (losers!). The people of Kentucky can't stand him."....VP JD Vance: "I empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle difference is that back then we had dumb presidents."....Andrew Sullivan: "A president who lies about everything all the time is singularly incapable of being a war president. People have to trust your word in a war. But Trump's word is toilet paper."....John Oliver on ICE agents: "These are criminal gangs,...bounty hunters making money for each body they manage to kidnap. They have quotas. You are their USA is sick."....WH Communications Director Steven Cheung: "The Nobel Peace Prize is illegitimate if President Trump -- the ultimate peace president -- is denied his rightful recognition of bringing harmony across the world."....Rep. MTG: "America is the greatest country in the world and I fight the nasty 'America Last' Democrats in Washington to keep it that way."....Trump on Democrats: "I hate them. I cannot stand them, because I really believe they hate our country."....Rep. Hakeem Jeffries on House passing Trump's BBB: "One big ugly is a crime scene."....Jonathan Alter: "Might as well tear down the Statue of LIberty and flush Emma Lazarus's poem down the toilet."....Garrison Keillor: "Every morning the news hits us like a baseball bat. How did this crook and clown achieve the White House so he could wage war on science, higher education, the Constitution, regulatory agencies, and the world economy, while redecorating the Oval Office to look like the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas?"....Trump supporter to reporter "We're not stupid. Donald Trump is a genius. That's what the J stands for.".... ........Trump on Jeffrey Epstein: "Somebody that nobody cares about."....Lara Loomer: "How come we can't talk about what a dumb lying bimbo Pam Blondi is?...How many more times is this woman going to get away with F-ing everything up before she is fired?"....Trump on Rosie O'Donnell: "She is a threat to humanity."....O'Donnell in response: "I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours. I'm everything you fear: a loud woman, a queer woman, a mother who tells the truth, an American who got out of the country before you set it ablaze."....Trump on Elon Musk: "50% genius, 50% boy."....Steve Bannon: "Formerly known as Elon Musk, Elmo the not an American, you're a South we take enough time and prove the facts of that, you should be deported because it's a crime what you did -- among many."....Musk: "The fat, drunken slob called Bannon will go back to prison and this time for a long time. He has a lifetime of crime to pay for."....Tucker Carlson: "Why are my cities disgusting? I don't even want to go there. It smells like weed and halal food."....CA Gov. Gavin Newsom: "Kids running from tear gas, crying on the phone because their mother was just taken from the fields. Trump calls me 'Newscum' but he's the real scum."....Jonathan V. Last on Trump: "Reinventing ICE as the primary instrument of internal state power. ICE is more or less a national brute squad."...Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Trump: "Authoritarian leader cult is folding to his will."....CA Governor's press office on Stephen Miller: "This fascist cuck in DC continues his assault on democracy and the the Constitution hurt your feelings, Stephen. Cry harder."....Charlie Kirk on Texas flooding: "The death toll likely would not have been as high if it wasn't for DEI."....Dean Blundell on Trump: "An aging, increasingly incoherent, barely upright man."....Maureen Dowd: "Trump, who plays at being king, is not interested in virtue; only in humiliation, conflict, enrichment and revenge."....Tina Brown: "Out of Trump's ass, his ego, and his flawless media intuition, came: Let's bomb the shit out of Fordo."....John Cleese on Trump administration: "This is why dictatorships fail. Dictators always surround themselves with yes-people who are terrified to acquaint the dictator with reality."....Trump on Sen. Rand Paul: "His ideas are actually crazy (losers!). The people of Kentucky can't stand him."....VP JD Vance: "I empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle difference is that back then we had dumb presidents."....Andrew Sullivan: "A president who lies about everything all the time is singularly incapable of being a war president. People have to trust your word in a war. But Trump's word is toilet paper."....John Oliver on ICE agents: "These are criminal gangs,...bounty hunters making money for each body they manage to kidnap. They have quotas. You are their USA is sick."....WH Communications Director Steven Cheung: "The Nobel Peace Prize is illegitimate if President Trump -- the ultimate peace president -- is denied his rightful recognition of bringing harmony across the world."....Rep. MTG: "America is the greatest country in the world and I fight the nasty 'America Last' Democrats in Washington to keep it that way."....Trump on Democrats: "I hate them. I cannot stand them, because I really believe they hate our country."....Rep. Hakeem Jeffries on House passing Trump's BBB: "One big ugly is a crime scene."....Jonathan Alter: "Might as well tear down the Statue of LIberty and flush Emma Lazarus's poem down the toilet."....Garrison Keillor: "Every morning the news hits us like a baseball bat. How did this crook and clown achieve the White House so he could wage war on science, higher education, the Constitution, regulatory agencies, and the world economy, while redecorating the Oval Office to look like the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas?"....Trump supporter to reporter "We're not stupid. Donald Trump is a genius. That's what the J stands for."....
The Independent
a day ago
- Business
- The Independent
Facing fallout from Epstein and inflation President Donald Trump turns to misdirection
As the president faces a sustained rebellion among some of his most loyal MAGA influencers, and watches younger Americans who make up their audiences turn away, he appears desperate to find a new narrative on which his voters can fixate. Right-wing podcasters are far from the only ones talking about the issue. It has expanded through the so-called 'manosphere' and continues to dominate discussions on X, Reddit and other platforms including YouTube, where a wide range of political commentators are joining the fray. Reports indicate the issue has fractured the president's top advisers. The result: Trump is swinging at every potential issue that comes his way as he searches for a piece of red meat to throw at the hungry wolves. Over the weekend came the president's first and second attempts. A vow to revoke the citizenship of Rosie O'Donnell (clearly a pressing matter, and also, not legal) followed by a strangely-worded plea to his followers: just drop it, guys! Then a third, on Sunday: crashing the on-stage celebration of Chelsea as the club emerged victorious over PSG at the Club World Cup. 'What's going on with my 'boys' and, in some cases, 'gals'?' asked a very normal-sounding Trump on Truth Social over the weekend. 'We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and 'selfish people' are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein,' he continued. On Tuesday, the administration was hit with another bit of bad news. Inflation ticked up to its highest level in months in June as the president continued to threaten tariffs on the country's closest trading partners, and despite Trump's insistences to the contrary. For months, the president has raged at Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, demanding that he cut interest rates. Powell has refused, citing inflation risks; this clearly undermines Trump's insistence. Now, with Trump's so-called 'reciprocal' tariffs set to go into effect in just over two weeks, there will be even more questions aimed at the White House on the issue of how much higher prices will be for the average American consumer. Those immediate price hikes, should they continue or even accelerate, could severely undercut Republican members of Congress as they campaign for re-election into the beginning of next year on the passage of Trump's spending legislation which included the extension of the 2017 tax cuts. And so Trump needed a distraction. On Tuesday, that meant swinging at a familiar target: Adam Schiff, the junior Democratic senator from California. In a Truth Social post, he falsely accused Schiff of mortgage fraud for claiming a home in Maryland as his primary residence. But the practice is common for members of Congress, who spend months at a time working out of the Capitol and in decades past used to move their whole families to the D.C., Maryland or northern Virginia regions for ease of access to their jobs. Political pressure now forces many to maintain residences near the Capitol and back in their home states. This is of course hardly a burden for many members of Congress but can be difficult for younger members with more limited financial means. Legal analysts who looked at the residences have said that Trump's claims of clear illegality are false. And that's to say nothing of the can of worms the president could have opened with the following line: 'he must LIVE in CALIFORNIA because he was a Congressman from CALIFORNIA.' That could certainly be an awkward line of attack were it to be repurposed against Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the Alabama senator (and apparent Florida resident) who is now running for governor in the former state and already taking fire from Democrats on the issue of his residency. Schiff told Inside Washington on Tuesday that the post was 'just the latest example of political retaliation by Donald Trump against one of his perceived enemies'. But the president, right now, seems solely focused on moving his base past the one issue that has now divided it to a greater extent than anything since perhaps January 6. Ironically, that's the same kind of tunnel vision that led his vice president, JD Vance, to fan these flames to start with. It remains to see if he'll be successful, or if the administration can come up with something to satisfy his critics — who aren't growing any quieter. But the White House's current strategy reeks of desperation.
